Abstract
Industry 4.0 is a promising concept that allows industries to meet customers’ demands with flexible and resilient processes, and highly personalised products. This concept is made up of different dimensions. For a long time, innovative digital technology has been thought of as the only dimension to succeed in digital transformation projects. Other dimensions have been identified such as organisation, strategy, and human resources as key while rolling out digital technology in factories. From these findings, researchers have designed industry 4.0 theoretical models and then built readiness models that allow for analysing the gap between the company initial situation and the theoretical model. Nevertheless, this purely deductive approach does not take into consideration a company’s background and context, and eventually favours one single digital transformation model. This article aims at analysing four actual digital transformation projects and demonstrating that the digital transformation’s success or failure depends on the combination of two variables related to a company’s background and context. This research is based on a double approach: deductive and inductive. First, a literature review has been carried out to define industry 4.0 concept and its main dimensions and digital transformation success factors, as well as barriers, have been investigated. Second, a qualitative survey has been designed to study in-depth four actual industry digital transformation projects, their genesis as well as their execution, to analyse the key variables in succeeding or failing. 46 semi-structured interviews were carried out with projects’ members; interviews have been analysed with thematic content analysis. Then, each digital transformation project has been modelled regarding the key variables and analysed with regards to succeeding or failing. Investigated projects have consolidated the models of digital transformation. Finally, nine digital transformation models have been identified. Industry practitioners could design their digital transformation project organisation and strategy according to the right model.
Highlights
Industry 4.0 is a promising concept that allows industries to meet customers’ demands with flexible and resilient processes, and highly personalised products
Even if digital technology is considered as the main success factor to succeed in the transition towards industry 4.0, other aspects such as strategy, industrial organisation, and work and competencies issues have been highlighted in scientific literature and should be considered when it comes to running digital transition projects
We present the results of an in-depth qualitative survey carried on four French industrial companies, which is aimed at analysing actual digital transformation projects
Summary
Industry 4.0 is a promising concept that allows industries to meet customers’ demands with flexible and resilient processes, and highly personalised products. Other dimensions have been identified such as organisation, strategy, and human resources as key while rolling out digital technology in factories From these findings, researchers have designed industry 4.0 theoretical models and built readiness models that allow for analysing the gap between the company initial situation and the theoretical model. Even if digital technology is considered as the main success factor to succeed in the transition towards industry 4.0, other aspects such as strategy, industrial organisation, and work and competencies issues have been highlighted in scientific literature and should be considered when it comes to running digital transition projects From these findings, maturity models have been designed to support companies to achieve it (Biegler et al, 2018; Carreiro Santos & Martinho, 2018; Pessot et al, 2020). The following research questions (RQs) have been posed: RQ1: What are the different digital transformation models?
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